Some of you may be aware that we are currently being inundated with new users signing up and PMing people with spam, from unsolicited ads to pornography.

Since they don't seem to be going away like they usually do, if you receive a pm of this nature, please use the 'Report Message' button in the top right corner of your PM, just left of the Quote button, so that the moderating team can take the appropriate action.

I decided to see if I could fix this. Haven't done much with the admin panel yet, and my access is limited, but I have been able to tweak the New User group permissions in order to prevent them from PMing with no approved posts. It's been tested and confirmed to work, and once approved, PMs become open to them, so we hopefully won't get any new users PMing crap anymore. We may have some sleeper accounts that could still send them, but this should hopefully limit them too.

Any long term users who suddenly find their PMs are no longer working, please post in the General Forum, and I'll make sure you're added to the correct user group.

Thanks for sorting this Stordarth - I guess this is really about the only way to stop it, such a shame as I always liked to keep PMs available for new members who are having trouble posting and need to contact a member of staff. Then again, these days I doubt many people can't figure out how to post on a forum! (tho I was surprised on my other forum just how many luddites there are...)

Yeah, I was hesitant to do it for that reason, but as the issue became more prolific it seemed the only way to handle it.

Maybe you can do something a little more involved, such as enable PMs but only to mods and admins until their accounts are approved? That would still give new genuine users an avenue for help, and regular users won't have to put up with the spam. I'd have a go at it, but I was nervous enough about this one tweak breaking PMs across the board.